Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

The real test came inside the controller, in the details of hardware and software. To Sondra’s knowledge, no one had ever managed to duplicate those exactly.

Conditions within the chamber were still changing, but they were close enough to their final values for Sondra to dispense with her suit. She eased out of it, picked up her portable test kit, and went across to the tank identified by the Fugates as the one where the feral form had passed its humanity test. She took a deep breath. This was it. Somewhere within this tank’s controller lay the exact evidence as to why humanity had been affirmed where none existed. Either she would understand the problem, and return vindicated to Earth; or she would fail to find an answer, and everyone—Bey Wolf, Denzel Morrone, Trudy Melford, Robert Capman—would be provided with the confirmation of her inadequacy.

Sondra ran the standard diagnostics for the tank’s computer. It was no surprise to find that the unit passed every one; the Fugate engineers would certainly have done that test as soon as they realized that something had gone wrong. Sondra went to the next level. She removed the cover of the controller and exposed the hardware.

Again, there was the EEC logo. There, too, was the BEC serial number, indicating that the unit had been fabricated on Earth. The date of BEC final inspection which and performed the inspection. Sondra checked that ID with her test kit. It was a valid one, still operating in the inner system. Either this was genuine BEC hardware, or some pirate had achieved a level of forgery new to the Office of Form Control.

Sondra moved to the next and more difficult step. If there had been later tampering with the original BEC hardware, traces of that would certainly remain. Subtle traces, but the Office of Form Control had developed a whole suite of delicate tests for just such manipulation.

There were forty-two diagnostics, of steadily increasing complexity and difficulty of associated analysis. Sondra began to work through the tests, patiently recording every result in the test kit. The first one showed normal unit operation. Second test: normal; third test …

After seven hours of continuous work she was finished. She paused, moved across to her suit, and took a stimulant pill and a drink of water. She sat on the floor, to stare at the tank and its controller.

Nothing. No sign of malfunction, no abnormalities. The BEC hardware appeared to be performing exactly as it had been designed to perform. She had found no sign of tampering. The original seals, applied when the unit left BEC, seemed unbroken. This was genuine BEC equipment, exactly as it had been provided from the BEC factory.

Sondra sighed. All that was left were the software functions. Compared with the tests for those, she knew from experience that the hardware tests she had just completed were child’s play. Hardware solutions were standardized. Software, by its nature, was as flexible as thought itself. It admitted an infinite number of valid variations. Just because something was different did not at all imply that it was wrong.

Give up, go home, and say the assignment was beyond her?

Never. Before she did that, she would stay here until she starved or died of exhaustion.

Sondra’s stomach gave a sympathetic grumble. How long since she had eaten? Too long, that was for sure. When she had examined the software routines she would treat herself to the best meal that the Fugate Colony could provide.

Until then? Well, she had heard stories in the Office of Form Control, about Bey Wolf in his younger days. When he got his teeth into a problem he would work forty-eight hour stretches, without stopping for anyone or anything.

Anything that he could do, she could do. Properly regarded, hunger was nothing more than a driving force for work.

Sondra returned to her seat at the tank’s controller and went at it.

The stories told in the Office of Form Control about Bey Wolf were true; they were also incomplete. He did have an ability to immerse himself in a problem, with a concentration that ignored irrelevant internal signals like fatigue or hunger. He also had a habit of emerging from that profound introspection every half hour or so. Then his consciousness would sweep over the external world like a radar beam, examining it for danger signals.

It was a habit-not instinct, but learned from hard experience-that Sondra had not yet acquired.

Sondra’s task was both easier and harder than any that she had faced in her time at the Office of Form Control. Easier, because the software that she was working with involved the humanity test, and only the humanity test. The bewildering set of metamorphoses offered by purposive form-control, everything from cosmetics to long-term encystment for free- space survival, was not an issue.

But harder, too, because the property under examination in the humanity test, namely, the ability to interact with purposive form-change equipment, was itself so variable. One could not say that every individual was the same in this respect; one could say, with far more accuracy, that everyone was different, carrying a unique form-change profile as characteristic of that person as a chromosomal ID.

The programs that Sondra was now examining contained millions of branch points and options. It was conceivable that some of those branches had never before been exercised during the humanity tests. Logical errors could occur with even the best techniques of structured programming.

Fortunately, finding every error was not her job. She could follow the specific path that the form-change programs had employed when they interacted with the feral form and declared it to be human. Since every interaction and every executed instruction was on file, there was no particular skill in tracking that path. It was actually rather easy to do using the special ferret routines that Bey had provided. They would detect and flag any invalid piece of logic.

What was far more tricky was spotting a program patch—a place where someone had, for his or her own purposes, taken the original logic and substituted a modified version. That was her own best bet as to the source of the trouble.

Sondra slaved on, totally absorbed in her work. At first it was exciting, with the prospect of a surprise at any point. That lift slowly faded, as more and more of the program was examined and found to be logically perfect. There came a point when she felt sure that she was more than halfway through.

She had no thought of stopping.

If it’s not hardware, it has to be software. There’s nothing else. Keep going. Don’t lose concentration.

But at last Sondra realized that she was coming to the final section, a mere few thousand instructions. She ground her way on to the bitter end, reluctant to admit that the chance of finding anything wrong in the final tenth of a percent of the code was close to zero.

At last she found herself staring at stark truth, in the form of a simple final message. It read PROGRAM COMPLETE; in Sondra’s own mind it spelled FAILURE.

There had been no hardware tampering. The machine was just as BEC had delivered it, with the original seal intact. And it was not software tampering, nor syntax error, nor more complex logic error.

It was nothing. There was nothing left to look at.

Sondra stood up and began to meander hopelessly around the room, pausing to stare blindly at each empty form-change tank. She felt sick. She was hyperventilating, her head spun giddily, and she was chilled to the bone.

How long had she been here, slaving away to no purpose? She glanced at her watch. More than eighteen hours-eighteen wasted hours, with nothing to show but exhaustion.

And finally, as though faculties that she had held in suspension were suddenly clicking back into use, a horde of questions raced through her mind.